


Console

by Annabel7



Category: Alien: Isolation, Aliens: Resistance
Genre: F/M, Gen, Ripley and the botfriend are only mentioned, Yo first fic in that ship tag, and there are MINOR spoilers, anyway I did a thing oops, major character death you ask?, the title is a play on words ahaha pretend I'm funny, this technically fits within the canon of the comic as of issue one, well only five of us probably consider samuels a major character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 09:32:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17526197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annabel7/pseuds/Annabel7
Summary: Zula and Davis have a late night conversation, and Ripley's not-so-great mental health is brought up.





	Console

**Author's Note:**

> MILD spoilers for the first issue, I repeat:
> 
> MILD SPOILERS AHEAD.
> 
> I just read the first issue of Resistance, and while I’m still going to continue writing in my AU, which was eventually planned to turn into “Amanda, Zula, and botfriends head a small space pirate crew of alien hunters” anyway, I did write this one little thing that takes place during the first issue of Resistance.
> 
> Also I wrote this in 20 minutes. I had to do it.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“For being someone with a newfound synthetic phobia, she took to you pretty easily,” Zula said. She set her cracked coffee mug on the inside of a desk drawer she had pulled out specifically for the purpose of a cup holder. Davis had frazzeled out his audio trying to stop her the first time she set something down by his monitor; he had only barely survived drowning the first time, he had no interest in short circuiting again. 

Zula was careful. She was also attentive, after Ripley slumped to her bed (though she doubted that she actually slept much), she would try to keep Davis company until she couldn’t hold her head up. Sometimes it was work. Sometimes it was conversation. Sometimes she would gently tap the side of the monitor, as if he could actually feel it. He saw her actions through a small camera mounted at the top of his screen, but touch no longer registered.

“Did you hear me?” she asked, and checked that his audio input dials were turned on.

“I did. I was only playing back what I’ve seen. She never questioned why you risked death to save me either.”

“She likes you.” Zula said.

“She  _trusts_  me. Which from everything you’ve told me about her--from what I’ve discussed with her--is even more surprising.” Zula’s eyes widened at his words.

“You’ve talked with her? About things other than work?”

“We both get bored of talking to you.”

“I could unplug you.”

“Are you jealous?” he asked. Davis couldn't vary his vocal tone too much, but Zula had learned to catch the subtle shifts of it mostly by the volume he was using; he was joking, if only little.

“Fuck you. What has she said?”

“Very little about what’s she’s experienced, if that’s what you wanted to know,” Davis’s voice may have been limited in this set up, but she could still get a sense of emotion to his words. She realized that it should have sounded eerie, but was just glad to hear him at all.

“I know she was floating for three days. I know she’s seen some shit. I know she’s  _done_  some shit," she paused. "She never tells me more than pieces. I caught name drops of a Verlaine and a Ricardo. Nothing else.”

“She didn’t mention synthetics at all?”

“Not beyond warning me about the Working Joes.”

“Useless crash dummies; she’s told me about them too, and considering her reactions to anything that even slightly resembles them, I’m thrilled to have met her in this shell and not my previous one.”

“Ripley would have come around eventually. The glasses could have charmed anyone.”

“Did they charm you?”

“I don’t get charmed. I’m a marine.”

“We  _were_ marines.” He took a second of complete silent in which Zula sipped at her coffee. The beans were pre-ground, stale as hell, and she’d murder a man for a fresh cup, but they were operating on a zero dollar and zero credit budget, and took what they could get. As Davis said, they were marines, and used to the minimal, what concerned both of them was how quickly Ripley adjusted to it.

“Zula?”

“Yeah?”

“I told her about you. She asked me for stories, so I told her yours. She smiled, and said ‘I thought so,’“

“Davis, I don’t want to talk about--”

“--Whatever  _we_  are is beside the point. You want to know why she was so quick to trust me?” Of course she did, and she nodded, but Davis remained quiet again. This time he didn't’ speak up.

“Oh my God..." Zula said, half to herself, "Every Weyland-Yutani crew or contract crew has a synthetic on board.”

"That they do."

“Who did she lose?”

“Ripley didn’t offer a name or many details, and I wasn’t going to ask it from her. She said that someone offered her a chance at--” Davis cut himself off. 

“What?”

“I’ll play the recording. I can do more than I thought with the vocal synthesizer, but not what she did.”

“Play it.”

A lo-fi recording of Ripley’s voice crept shyly out of the speakers.

“ _I just have the worst fucking luck. The company wasn’t even going to bother with me but someone offered me a chance at.... **closure**_.  _I couldn’t turn him down.”_  her emphasis was a lack of, her voice more breath than sound, and something delicate and painful was happening in her words. “ _He didn’t know, I know he didn’t. I trusted him.”_

“ _What happened?”_  Davis’s voice replied in the playback.

“ _I don’t know. He tried to interface with the station’s hive-mind, and it...rejected him.”_

“ _This was a synthetic?”_

“ ** _He_** _was, yeah. I ended up running past there again later but he was gone.”_

“ _There was probably nothing you could do.”_

_“Zula stuck her neck out and was able to get you awake with one fucking memory chip. That was it. I didn’t even need the body and it’s not as if I went to get a degree in fucking engineering and should have known--”  
_

_“Zula and I are...a different situation.”  
_

_“I don’t think you are.”  
_

_“_ Oh...” Zula said, unsure what else she could even try to say. She knew that Ripley must have known the people she had been traveling with, even if only a little. She knew that she had to shoot at least one human--Ripley was gun shy, hesitating when offered a pistol on their last boarding. She also had a close--too close--encounter with a nest: coming out of a cryotube one day Zula saw her grasping at her chest before grounding herself and standing up.

“Ripley’s emotional state is secondary to the mission at hand, but--”

“She’s no good to us if she’s functioning on half a brain or half power.”

“Yes,”

“I’ll talk to her. She won’t--When I met her she was desperate to make a friend. Maybe I was desperate to keep one and didn’t notice. I followed her around on the base, asked a couple questions about her work, but nothing else. She told me her life story. All of it down to her absentee dad getting her stuck on old Star Trek series as a little kid. Since we picked her up she’s only said the minimal about herself.”

“Try to get her out of herself. You did it for me.”

“You were easier to crack open.”

“Literally.”

Zula stood up and pushed her chair in; she took up her coffee and leaned over the monitor,

“ _CAREFUL_.” 

“I am careful. I’d be dead if I wasn’t.” She pressed a short kiss to the top of the monitor. A habit more than anything else at this point.

“I can’t feel that.”

“You say that every time.”

“It’s true.”

“I  _will_  find you a body some day. I promise.” Like their emotions, like these conversations, it was a secondary goal. Had they not found out about the bioweapons program, they would be on earth still, their priorities aligned differently, but right now their mission was far more vital. “I’ll see if Ripley’s still pacing her room; try to talk to her.”

“Goodnight, Zula.”

“Goodnight, Davis,” she reached around to the back of the monitor, and shut it off for the night.

 

 

She wished the window for their leave was wider; she had found a cheap Weyland-Yutani synthetic on the market off of a scrap vessel. Not much to look at, and she didn’t know what Davis would want; it was badly burned, most of the joints broken, and melted scars over it’s back. Fire damaged most likely, and it was a Weyland-Yutani office exclusive, meaning it was probably already a secondhand android. 

Zula considered getting it, and having Ripley take a look. She was good with machines, and not too bad with software despite it not being what she was originally trained to work with. She probably could have done something with it, but Zula had the notice from Davis only a couple hours later that they had to leave, and she left it there at the market. 

**Author's Note:**

> I might add more conversations between Zula and Davis as the series goes on, but I really wanted to keep this something that could fit in with the canon. I'm mildly sorry about that awful bit at the end, but I upset myself with it too, so we're even.


End file.
